This invention relates to a price-indicating electronic apparatus for selling individual articles from a number of different goods, comprising a storage device for storing data, the selling price for each individual article being determined depending on the information content of said data, an input keyboard for inputting information identifying each article to be sold, a visual display device having a numeric display unit displaying the associated selling price, and a processing device connected to said storage device, said keyboard and said visual display device, said processing device determining the selling price of the respective article depending on the identification information inputted by means of said keyboard and actuating said display unit for display of the selling price.
Conventional appliances of this type, e.g. cash registers or price-calculating scales, thus enable an automatic determination of the selling price of an article to be sold on the basis of the identification information having been inputted by means of the keyboard, and indicate said price on the visual display device. In this way, the information required for a sales transaction, viz. the selling price, is automatically determined and displayed. The information identifying the article may in particular consist in the article numbers generally used in the trade and also referred to as PLU (Price-Look-Up) numbers in commercial language.
In commerce, however, there is foreseeable a future development to the effect that an expansion to the present extent will no longer be possible so that there is a trend to make the present markets more profitable. Therefore it would be desirable to provide the sales personnel during each sales transaction with profit-related information so as to motivate it to promote the sales of profitable goods as far as it may influence such promotion. This is, however, not possible with conventional electronic apparatuses which merely determine the selling price and perhaps the weight and selling-date.